Virtual Reality

“Shop for more than Rs. 2000/- and get two tickets for Pink Panther 2 absolutely free” screamed the guy in the centre of Bangalore Central mall. What the hell is he so excited about? It’s all a theoretical abstraction! Everything here is eminently un-buyable, bordering on ridiculous, not to mention priced for the product, its manufacturer and his whole family too! But I am one of the very few who think this way I guess – the whole of Bangalore seems have descended here in hordes, lined up in the escalators of the mall. Have you ever stood in a queue for an escalator? Ha! Unique honour, right? I have!

The morning breeze shook me awake as I poked my nose out of our tent. In front of me was the vast expanse of the Narmada river, curving gracefully around a bend to my left and disappearing in a rush to my right. I wondered if it was water or liquid gold flowing in front of me – each ripple was outlined in golden sunshine. Behind me, people were gathering for an NBA meeting. Children were beginning to sing, their voices soaring to the skies and raining down on me from above – “Ma Rewa, taro pani nirmal” (the energy when children sing is just unique). Then it hit me. What it means to call a river, a seemingly inanimate thing, “mother”. Because, indeed, she (no more it) was. Mother to all the thousands on her wide banks, embracing them, feeding them, feeding their crops, enriching their lives. She was not different from them, she was part of them, or rather, she was them (remember Aldo Leopold). It took two days for the reality to sink in for me. Two days of walking along her banks, talking to her children. Maybe more people should try it, then they will turn off lights and taps more often. (But a no TV while on the banks rule should be made. Please no TV).

I was at a rehabilitation camp for dam refugees when this happened. Landlords (with their families) who owned 400 acres of land put into a small tin shed hardly enough for two people. Still they had the grace to give us all sweet tea – they apologized saying they could not afford milk. If I had been in their place, I don’t know if I would have been so courteous to a group of school kids! All the tall claims (and cheating) by the government – two or three families given the same land, not given alternate jobs, taken away from their river. One man took us to the center of a water expanse, stopped the boat, and told us, “my house used to be here. Under the water. My children used to play near that ‘tree’”. The stump I could see then was once a tree, with people under it? It almost broke my heart. Then a chilling realization struck me. This was one dam. One village of people affected by one dam. Which was fortunate to have Medha-di and the NBA to help them have a voice. What about all the other dams? ‘X’ number of acres under water – do those architects who made the dam(ned) plans know, even remotely realize what that means? Other ‘urban development project’ refugees? What about their children?

Children… Slumdog millionaire. Ya, Oscar winning, blah blah… But the image I am left with is of the slums, not the Oscars or Jamal Mallik and Anil Kapoor in that gaudily lit stage. The slums. How many displaced millions? The squalor, the indignity of living a life that you did not determine, and looking every day at the ‘haves’ – the slums next to Chatrapati Shivaji terminal is classic. You take off from Bombay you see high rise buildings lined with slums on all sides. Just an aside – during that movie, I wonder if even one person in the (rich) cast and crew even had the thought to do something for those kids? They picked kids off the slums and paid them like Rs. 50 a day, right? Then what? Won’t something humane inside you get up, slap you in the face, and say, “Wake up and do something for them”? I wonder… or is it just the Oscars, the fame, the money, the publicity… I guess that’s why they took those kids and gave them their 10 minutes of fame on Oscar stage. I wonder if those rich Britishers (and Indians) even think about those kids today. Or were they and their apathy ‘instruments’ for an Oscar?

How many of these slum people’s ancestors had land that got submerged to supply power and irrigation water to ‘taxpayers’? Taxpayers, ha. I just heard from mom yesterday that doctors (mind you, doctors) from my place usually lie about the number of beds they have and the number of patients they have to pay lesser tax. Hold on, that’s not it. When the municipality (finally) brought in biomedical waste treatment as a rule, doctors haggled about paying Rs. 1. 50 per kg waste for the municipal workers to come collect waste from their hospital. They wanted to pay Re. 1 only. My mom went and signed the agreement 4 years ago and said she is ready to pay Rs. 1. 50. But till date, no one has come to collect waste from my hospital because it is 17 km from the main town. Sigh. I don’t have anything to say.

And looking at the typical Indian – what does he feel when someone says ‘India’? Cricket? Bollywood (or whichever tinsel town is most popular in that area)? The kind of adulation people in these fields excite is something scary. I am wondering if I should add IT in that list, but stopped, what with the recession and people losing their jobs. I will try to look sad. But what about the absolute crying poverty in our backyard? Does anyone give it a thought? Does anyone say “I want to do something for my country”? even if they do, does it translate into action? Or is it just more convenient to put away that thought in a corner of the mind that one does not look at too frequently?

So what among all this is reality? All these images are from 23 years of one person’s life, a person who does not even actively follow news. I guess if P. Sainath starts off with some images he can write about a 100 pages and still keep going. I live in my small little world (as my blog subtitle says) and I am happy here. Wait a minute. Am I? Where does this little world of mine end? Who defines the boundary? If everyone thinks that slums and ‘development’ refugees (for eg) are outside their world, who will do anything for them?

I have had these thoughts many times before.

I have always stopped at this point, because I am too scared to go on. Because the next question will be, what have I done? And I don’t have the guts to answer it. Because, let me face it, much as I care about all this my reality as of now is my PhD. Comprehensive exam, proposal… butterfly metapopulation dynamics. Interesting to my ears. But at the end of such a series of images, hollow. But it is my current reality! And I convince myself I am doing ok and get back into my small little world, my comfort zone, my virtual reality.

Heck…